BRIAN SIBLEY : The Works

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BRIAN SIBLEY

Brian David Sibley (born 14 July 1949) is the author of over 100 hours of radio drama and has written and presented
hundreds of radio documentaries, features and weekly programmes. He is widely
known as the author of many movie 'making of' books, including those for the
Harry Potter series and The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.

Early life

Brian was born in Wandsworth, London, to Eric George
Sibley, an architectural draughtsman, and Doris Alice Sibley (née Summers). His
uncle was the philosopher Frank Sibley.

His family moved to Chislehurst, Kent when he was five years
old where he was educated at St Nicholas Church of England Primary School and
Chislehurst Secondary School for Boys (later renamed Edgebury School for Boys).

Following frustrated ambitions to be an actor, cartoonist
and animator, Sibley worked first in various clerical capacities for the London
Borough of Bromley and then for a shipping and finance company in the City of London as a
clerk, office manager and head of department. In his spare time, he began
submitting scripts to the BBC and, when his company was taken over, he accepted
redundancy and became a full-time freelance writer.

Career – Radio Writing and Broadcasting

Sibley's first radio programme was Three Cheers for Pooh,
broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 14 October 1976 to mark the 50th anniversary of the
publication of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. The programme was presented by
actor Peter Bull, featured the voices of Norman Shelley and pianist and singer
Antony Miall and was directed by John Tydeman, later Head of BBC Drama.

Other features quickly followed and, in 1981, he co-wrote
(with Michael Bakewell) BBC Radio 4's 26-part adaptation of Tolkien's The Lord of the
Rings broadcast (and several times repeated) to much acclaim. The series featured Ian Holm, Michael Hordern, Robert Stephens, John Le Mesurier, Peter Woodthorpe and Bill Nighy.

Sibley has also adapted C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and Mervyn
Peake's Titus Groan and Gormenghast for Radio 4, for which he received a Sony
Radio Award in 1985. The two 90-minute plays starred Sting as Steerpike with a cast that included Freddie Jones, Bernard Hepton, Sheila Hancock, Eleanor Bron, Judy Parfitt, Stratford Jones and Michael Aldridge.

He returned to Peake's writings in 2011 with The History
of Titus Groan, a cycle of six one-hour plays for BBC Radio 4's 'Classic
Serial' based on Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone and Maeve Gilmore's
Titus Awakes. Produced Jeremy Mortimer, the series began transmission on Sunday
10 July with a cast headed by David Warner, Luke Treadaway and Miranda
Richardson and won the BBC Audio Drama Award 2012 for Best Adaptation.

Other major radio dramatisations by Sibley include: John
Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress; Tolkien's Tales from the Perilous Realm; Roald
Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World; Lucy M. Boston's The Children of Green
Knowe, P. L. Travers' The Fox at the Manger, Laurens van der Post's The Night of the New Moon, J. B. Priestley's The
Thirty-First of June, Jeffrey Archer's A Matter of Honour, Frank Baker's Miss
Hargreaves, James Thurber's The Wonderful O, Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man (as well as two series of Bradbury's Tales
of the Bizarre) and a six-part dramatisation
of T H White's The Once and Future King starring David Warner as Merlyn.

2016
saw the broadcasting by the BBC of his two-part dramatisation of Richard
Adams's Watership Down and the J. G. Ballard short story Track 12, starring Anton Lesser.

Original radio plays include the much-repeated Penelope Keith Christmas amusement ...And Yet Another Partridge
in a Pear Tree; C. S. Lewis: Northern Irishman with Geoffrey Palmer and
It's Too Late Now with Alec McCowen.

As a broadcaster, he was a contributor to and then a regular
presenter of the former BBC Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope and the BBC
World Service arts magazine, Meridian. He also presented the Radio 4 film
programme, Talking Pictures, was a regular presenter of The Afternoon Shift and
chaired the radio panel games Break A Leg and Screen Test.

He has also contributed to Radio 4's Last Word, Brief Lives,
A Good Read, The Radio 2 Arts Show and Radio 3's Night Waves. He also presented
several series of the BBC television programme, First Light.

Radio features and documentaries for Radio 4, Radio 2 and
the World Service have included programmes devoted to Sherlock Holmes, Jack the
Ripper, Robin Hood, Dracula, Peter Pan, Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland
and the life and work of Ambrose Bierce, Robert Raikes, Harry Houdini, Terry Pratchett,
George Orwell, Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, P. L. Travers, Richmal Crompton, Fred Zinnemann,
Frank Capra, Jim Henson, Paco Pena, James Galway, Marcel Marceau, Bob Hoskins
and Julie Andrews.

Key series for BBC Radio 2, made in collaboration with
producer Malcolm Prince, include Ain't No Mickey Mouse Business, Disney's Women,
David Puttnam's Century of Cinema,Ain't No Mickey Mouse Music, No Place Like
Home: A Judy Garland Story and Showman and Starmaker: A Tribute to Bill Cotton. In 2010, he compiled and wrote a series of eight documentaries on
aspects of The Musical. Among his interviewees for these various series were, Michael
Caine, Richard Attenborough, Angela Lansbury, Margaret O'Brien, Dirk Bogarde,
Roy E. Disney, Robert Wise, Ken Annakin, Richard Curtis, Richard M. Sherman,
Leslie Briccusse, Bryan Forbes, Sandy Wilson, Tim Rice, James Rado and Edward
Albee.

Sibley's book, Shadowlands, was serialized on Radio 2, read
by Ian Richardson in what was one of the actor's last pieces of broadcast work
recorded before his death.

The Daily Telegraph radio critic, Gillian Reynolds gave him
the accolade "magician of the airwaves".

In 1992, Sibley wrote much of the script for Jeff Wayne's
Musical Version of Spartacus.

Career – Publications

Books include The Disney Studio Story , Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Making of the Classic Film and Mickey Mouse: His
Life and Times (all with Richard Holliss); The Land of Narnia, illustrated by
Pauline Baynes; The Treasury of Narnia (with Alison Sage); Shadowlands: The
True Story of C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman; The Book of Guinness Advertising; a
biography of Wilbert Vere Awdry, entitled The Thomas the Tank Engine Man; A
Christmas Carol: The Unsung Story; Cracking Animation: The Aardman book of 3-D
Film-making, (with Peter Lord); Chicken Run: Hatching the Movie; Three Cheers
for Pooh; and The Maps of Tolkien's Middle-earth with artist John Howe.

He is also the author of the children's book, The Frightful
Food Feud, and has edited, among other books, The Pooh Sketchbook and The Pooh
Book of Quotations and The Wisdom of C. S. Lewis.

The author of The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie
Trilogy and other books accompanying The Lord of the Rings, he subsequently
published the official biography of the films' director, Peter Jackson: A
Filmmaker's Journey.

More recent books include The Hobbit: The Battle of the
Five Armies – The Official Movie Guide, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug –
The Official Movie Guide, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – The Official
Movie Guide,The Making of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, Harry
Potter Film Wizardry, The Golden Compass: The Official Illustrated Movie
Companion, Mary Poppins: Anything Can Happen if You Let It (with Michael
Lassell) and a retelling of 50 Favourite Bible Stories selected and read on CD
by Cliff Richard and illustrated by Stephen Waterhouse.

In October 2016 he
was one of four writers contributing new stories about Winnie-the-Pooh for a
90th birthday collection, The Best Bear in All the World.

His story introduced
a new character, Penguin, inspired by a vintage photograph of A. A. Milne and
his young son, Christopher Robin, playing with the original teddy bear who
became Winnie-the-Pooh and a plush toy penguin. The same month saw the
publication of Taschen Books' The Walt Disney Film Archives. The Animated
Movies 1921–1968 to which he contributed five critical essays on Disney films.

He recorded DVD audio commentaries for Around the World in
80 Days, Animal Farm and Fantasia.

He has also appeared on the bonus extras to a number of
Disney Blu-rays and DVDs, among them Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
Pinocchio, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book,
Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland and The Scarecrow of
Romney Marsh as well as being included in the documentaries associated with
various DVD releases of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Other Interests

Sibley is President of The Lewis Carroll Society (2014- ); Honorary
Member of The Tolkien Society and The Children's Books History Society; Member
of The Inner Magic Circle.

The NEWS...

LAST MINUTE EASTER PRESENT IDEAS!

A new Revised and Expanded edition of CRACKING ANIMATION, the classic book on the films of Aardmann and the history of stop-frame, model animation, written by Peter Lord and Brian Sibley and with a Foreword by Nick Park.

A Double-CD set of Brian's BBC dramatisation of E T A Hoffman's The NUTCRACKER and the MOUSE KINGstarring Toby Robinson, Edward de Souza and Eric Alllen with specially composed music by Dave Hewson.

Brian's exhibition, Alice in Cartoonland, featuring 150 years of cartoons and caricatures, inspired by Lewis Carroll's famous heroine and her companions from Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land was on show at The Cartoon Museum. from 14 July – 1st November 2015...

BACK ON TRACK!

A revised and updated edition of The Thomas the Tank Engine Man, Brian's 1985 biography of the Reverend W Awdry is now available from Lion Hudson with a new introduction and epilogue and a Foreword by Gyles Brandreth

ORDER your copy here

RECENT RADIO:THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING

Brian's most recent radio dramatisation was an adaptation of T H White's fantasy classic, The Once and Future King...

The series of six one-hour plays were based on White's idiosyncratic retelling of the Arthurian legends that was also the inspiration for the Lerner and Loewe Broadway musical, Camelot, and the Walt Disney animated film, The Sword in the Stone.

The dramatisation followed Arthur's story from his boyhood as an adopted orphan to his miraculous revelation as 'Rightwise King of All England', the creation of the Round Table and its eventual collapse in the ruins of forbidden love, hatred, deceit and revenge.

The Once and Future King starred David Warner as Merlyn...

...and Paul Ready as King Arthur with Lyndsey Marshal as Queen Guenever

Brian's third volume, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies - Official Movie Guide, will be published in November 2014.

The fascinating, fact-filled, behind-scenes story of the making of Aardman Animation's most ambitious feature-length film, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (or for American readers,The Pirates! A Band of Misfits)

Brian's six-part dramatisation of the 'Gormenghast' novels of Mervyn Peake, The History of Titus Groan received the Best Adaptation Award in the inaugural BBC Audio Awards.

The award was presented by David Tennant. at a ceremony in the BBC Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House on Sunday 29 January,2012.

The judges described this as "a
brilliant piece of radio drama. It was a hugely ambitious undertaking
to adapt the darkly comic, surreal and visual world of Mervyn Peake's
novels for sound and this adaptation is faithful to both the spirit and
the landscape of the originals."THE HISTORY OF TITUS GROANavailable as a DOWNLOAD...

Followers
of Brian's recent cycle of radio plays (for more details, see below),
may care to know that the complete six-hour series can now be purchased
and downloaded from AudibleGo

Over six weeks, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Brian's dramatisation, The History of Titus Groan, based on Mervyn Peake's trio of novels Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone with elements of the recently published Titus Awakes by Maeve Gilmore (see item below).

The
cycle of radio plays began with 'Titus Arrives' in which Titus, the
77th Earl of Gormenghast is born to the royal house of Groan and the
ruthlessly ambitious kitchen boy, Steerpike, makes a bid for freedom.
Here are Carl Prekopp (left), as Steerpike, Hugo Docking, (right), as young Titus and Luke Treadaway, (centre),
as the narrator Titus. The series concludes on Sunday 14 August
(repeated Saturday 20 at 21:00) with 'Titus Alive', concluding Mervyn
Peake's Titus Alone and an episode from Maeve Gilmore's Titus Awakes.

Here is Brian with members of the cast on the first day of recording...

The plays are now available for purchase on download.

The series' producer, Jeremy Mortimer, writes about project (with a sound clip of Brian talking about the production) on the BBC Radio 4 Blog.

Photos: Islay Bell-Webb and David Hunter

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a half-hour documentary, A Hundred Years of Mervyn Peake,
exploring the life of the artist and writer and, in particular, his
connection with the island of Sark and its fictional counterparts in
Peake's illustrations to Treasure Island (left), The Hunting of the Snark, Swiss Family Robinson and other works.

The
programme was presented by Mervyn's son, Sebastian Peake, and featured
his brother and sister, Fabian and Clare as well as novelist, Joanne
Harris and Gormenghast's dramatist, Brian Sibley.

Titus Awakes by Maeve Gilmore based on a fragment by Mervyn Peake from Vintage Books (Random House) with an introduction by Brian Sibley

Mervyn
Peake's widow, the late Maeve Gilmore, wrote a conclusion to her
husband's cycle of novels about Titus Groan. Lost for many years, the
book is now finally published to coincide with Mervyn Peake's centenary.

Brian was featured on the cover of July 2013 issue of The Magic Circular, the magazine of The Magic Circle with a profile interview inside...

On the BOX...

Brian can also be seen on the extras to just-out 70th Anniversary DVD release, Pinocchio

At the MOVIES...

Brian is currently to be seen in a new documentary film, The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story
which examines the career and the strained sibling relationship
between songwriting brothers, Richard M Sherman and Robert Sherman.

The Sherman Brothers wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Slipper and the Rose and provided songs for countless Disney movies - Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Jungle Book, Winnie-the-Pooh to name but a few - as well as many of the Disneyland attractions such as 'It's A Small World'.

Out of print for several years, Brian's guide to J R R Tolkien's map-making will be republished on 28 May as The Road Goes Ever On and On: The map of Tolkien's Middle-earth.

The
revised hardback edition will have new illustrations by John Howe as
well as John's colour version of the map in a pocket at the back of the
book.

On his web-site, the artist writes: "I
did new black-and-white illustrations for the booklet, since I
couldn't locate the ones I'd done for the first edition (they were
pretty bad; had I located them, I might well have chucked them out and
done new drawings anyway)."

A new paperback edition of Phantastes,
George MacDonald's 1858 novel of the fantastic is published at £7.99
by Paternoster with Arthur Hughes' original illustrations and an
introduction and annotations by Nick Page. The book carries endorsements
from C S Lewis, W H Auden, G K Chesterton - and Brian Sibley who writes: 'Phantastes
is a haunting, provocative and disquieting novel that links the dreams
of medieval romance with the new awakenings of the Victorian era and -
in opening a long-lost door to the realm of Faerie - stands as a
daringly challenging forerunner to the modern fantasy novel.'

50 Favourite Bible Storiesretold by Brian, illustrated by the brilliant young artist, Stephen Waterhouseand read on three CDs by Cliff Richard as part of the musical star's celebration of fifty years in show-biz

Mary Poppins: Anything Can Happen If You Let ItThis
book chronicles the journey of everyone's favourite nanny from page to
stage: P L Travers immortal character as she appeared in the
original books, in Walt Disney's unforgettable film and, most
recently on the Broadway and West End stage...

IN THE WORKS

THE WORKS is the home page for briansibley.com. It's all about what I've done and what I'm doing and will be regularly updated with details of new and recent publications and forthcoming broadcast appearances.

You'll find out more about me: the people, places and things that I like (as well as a few rants, rages and obsessions!) by reading the more-or-less-daily posts on Brian Sibley: his blog and by following the LINKS below to my other blogs with their assortment of articles, stories and photographs.

So, welcome to THE WORKS!

The Works Manager

COMING NOVEMBER 2016

Essays by Brian Sibley on 'Alice in Wonderland', 'Mary Poppins', 'Winnie the Pooh' and other Disney films